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They got tucked into a transportation bill (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act or the FAST Act), but with a deft set of amendments the Reforming Access for Investments in Startup Enterprises Act of 2015 (or the RAISE Act) and other small business initiatives were signed by the President on December 4, 2015 and are now law. The new law also includes a direction to the SEC to change Form S-1 to allow forward incorporation by reference in filings by smaller reporting companies. This is a big and positive change for companies not eligible to use short form registration on Form S-3.

The RAISE Act assures an exemption from SEC registration for a resale of a security to an accredited investor who has access to certain information from the company, no bad actors or shells allowed, no general solicitation or advertising, no start-up companies and the class of stock being sold has to have existed for at least 90 days. This eliminates the old awkward invented Securities Act Section 4(1-1/2) exemption which was used in practice and accepted by the SEC but actually nowhere in the statute. This could help add comfort to secondary market folks who help people buy pre-IPO stocks like Facebook and Twitter before they go public. It could also help PIPE (private investment in public equity) investors who wish to transfer their shares more confidently in a private transaction before they would otherwise be eligible to sell the shares publicly.

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